Celebrity broker Ryan Serhant’s recent remarks that young buyers must “adapt” to a new, less forgiving housing reality hit like a splash of cold water for millions of Americans still holding to the old dream of easy homeownership. Serhant bluntly told Fox News that the baseline of affordability many grew up with is gone and even said his own daughter will have to “figure it out” as the market resets for Gen Z.
The facts behind his warning are stark: mortgage rates and housing costs have climbed to levels that make that same dream unaffordable for far too many, with insiders noting rates around 7 percent and prices in hot markets that remain stubbornly high. That reality isn’t a personal failing by young people — it’s a policy-created burden that insists hardworking families pay more for the basic security of a roof over their heads.
Even establishment surveys back up the generational shift Serhant describes: the National Association of Realtors reports the median age of first-time buyers has risen to a record 40 years old, a chilling sign that the pathway to owning a home is slipping out of reach. When a first-time buyer is that old, you can stop pretending this is a temporary blip; we are watching an entire social contract fray at the edges.
You won’t hear many on the left admit the causes: decades of burdensome zoning rules, sprawling regulation, and an administration that treats inflation and supply shortages as abstract talking points rather than the real pain affecting families. Combine that with the Federal Reserve’s past money printing and a political class more interested in virtue-signaling than building homes, and you have a perfect storm that forces young Americans to “adapt” to a future that once would have been unthinkable.
Serhant also pointed out an ugly new dependence forming in the market: baby boomers are increasingly using cash to secure housing for their children, effectively buying the next generation’s entry ticket into ownership while hollowing out the normal channels of upward mobility. That’s a heartbreaking stopgap, not a solution, and it reveals how unequal access has become when family wealth substitutes for a functioning housing market.
Conservatives should not accept a future where aspiring homeowners are told to lower their expectations because elites failed to govern. The solution is not cultural resignation but pro-growth reform: free up housing supply, end strangling regulations at the local and federal level, restore fiscal sanity, and encourage family formation and savings rather than penalizing it with punitive taxes and inflationary policies.
Ryan Serhant’s on-the-ground honesty is uncomfortable but necessary — it’s a wake-up call for voters and policymakers alike that the promise of homeownership can be rescued if we choose to fight for it. Instead of telling young Americans to accept less, conservatives must push to rebuild an economy where buying a home is still the proud, achievable next step for hardworking families.
